Can anyone tell me if you can manage a 160 page site with Blocs? (in three languages therefore 480).
If it were possible how is it managed?
Thx
Mauro
No reason why not in theory, but that is a huge amount of work on any app or platform. I am currently working on a one hundred page website and Blocs handles this easily, yet it will still be very time consuming due to the shear quantity of content. I can only say it is faster than other apps I have used.
From what I am hearing you would probably do well to embark on such a project with Blocs 4, which is due for release in the near future, including a large number of workflow enhancements. Many would recommend doing a project like this with a CMS and Blocs has an excellent flat file option called Volt, while Blocs 4 will allow users to create custom Wordpress themes as well that can then be exported.
On the question of language management there are different methods I gather, however @Eldar created a video here showing his method.
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In my last multilingual website project, I made a blocs file for every language (finished the first language and duplicated that file for all the other languages) and combined them outside of blocs in the code-editor.
Large sites are really best planned in advance of starting a new website project. This may mean a bit of pen-pushing before getting down to the fun bit of actually making the site.
I was recently working on a website project for a large utility company that provides a wide range of services from basic installation of domestic heating systems - all the way up to major commercial installations. In between they have divisions that deal with maintenance, emergency call outs, payment of bills, charging points for electric vehicles, energy advice and a whole host of other features. The site is well over 1000 pages.
To overcome the logistical nightmare of dealing with so many pages and facets of the underlying business, the site was broken down into a series of sub-sites all based on a common template and theme. Different people were assigned the responsibility of dealing with their own sub-site and getting it published in the main domain. The whole site was brought together with the use of a mega-menu that used relative URL’s to point to the various site folders on the domain. The menu was common to all sites. This allowed each section of the site to be maintained independently. New pages could be added or removed from sections of the site without having to redesign the whole mega menu on every sub-site. The pages within each sub-site were referenced through navigation links within the sub-site itself. This makes perfect sense because anyone who is interested in say “boiler maintenance”, which may comprise of several pages in itself - including terms and conditions etc. would go to the Boiler maintenance section of the site from the mega menu. Once on the relevant home page of that section, there will be links to the other section pages. There is absolutely no need for anyone to want to go directly to the terms and conditions page of the boiler maintenance section directly from any page in the site. As long as there is a logical route through the site, breaking it down into manageable sections is a good way to go.
As for the multi-lingual aspect. This too is easily managed by replicating the blocs files and saving them as files containing the ISO language code of the appropriate languages in the file name. You then translate each section in turn and publish to an overall language folder. This way you end up with a series of sites, each with their own section folders. All it then needs is a language switcher to move visitors to the appropriate version of the site page when they select a language. There are a number of ways of achieving this which have been the subject of other discussion on this forum.
Ultimately, it’s all about planning. Even if Blocs can handle 100+ page sites, its often best to do what the large site developers do - break it down into logical sections and make a sub-site for each section.
Thank you very much for the answers.
The site is already online with a tailor-made CMS but the freedom that BLOCS offers is better. So, following your advice, I design a modular structure and see what happens. If it works, I’ll show you. Many thanks for now.
Mauro
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